Elements. Fantasy cards game

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Originally Posted by Disaru

I've played as eternity decks, and its not overpowering. An artic squid, which prevents a card from being used for 3 turns, whereas eternity allows u to play it the turn after. All you have to do is mass-summon all your monsters.

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Eternity is not broken because the AI doesn't do well with predicting the future.

If it had an Eternity in hand and waited to play and then use it against your creatures when you had a low count, and stored up reverse times to deal with you flooding it, you'd find yourself in a lot more trouble.

Edit: Also a thought about true pvp. If there's any concern about hacking decks or other issues like that, initially I think it would be awesome even with no reward. So you'd select to play, enter the name (Match up via forum or something) and then have the pvp match when your opponent did the same for you. No coins, no cards, no reward at all for it -- just the fun of getting to test your deck against your opponent. That seems like a good starting point.

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Originally Posted by Disaru

I've played as eternity decks, and its not overpowering. An artic squid, which prevents a card from being used for 3 turns, whereas eternity allows u to play it the turn after. All you have to do is mass-summon all your monsters.

And I agree with druidic staff. It should attack 3 hp, and heal 3 hp for every 10 life quantum.

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I did say that it isn't a problem currently because of the AI. But, the whole point of what I was saying is that once an opponent is ahead in the game, he can lock you down, and prevent you from ever drawing a new card. So, if you have no answers, you lose. Arctic squid is somewhat annoying, but it is much easier to deal with, and doesn't stop you from drawing cards.

Drawing cards matters a lot. It gives you CARD ADVANTAGE. Card advantage is the advantage you have over an opponent based on how many cards you have. It is similar to material advantage in chess. Although some cards are stonger than others, they all have the same value when it comes to drawing them, because they are an unknown until drawn. Card advantage is also the reason why earthquake is so powerful. It is a 3 for 1, in other words, it deals with three cards at the cost of one card. That is why it is effective. Eternity can prevent a player from gaining any cards for the rest of the game. That is an extreme amount of card advantage.

A pretty simple yet fun game you got here :]

Anyway, just wanted to point out that "reverse time" is overpowered.
I mean, it's THE best way to get rid of monsters.

Compare it to Lightning which does only 5 dmg and costs 3 quantums OR Firebolt which costs 3 and requirs you to have a huge amount of fire q to inflict any serious damage.

Reverse Time costs TWO, but kills ANY monster without ANY disadvantage, even if it had 20 lifepoints.

Maybe the creator of that card thought that returning monster on top of the deck is some sort of advantage for the player on whom Reverse Time was used.
IT'S NOT.

It it EXACTLY same as KILLING a monster with let's say Lightning and then drawing the same monster, just because it happened to be the next card in the deck.
It ALSO slows down the deck by 1 turn.

You don't get an extra card because your strongest monster was killed by Reverse Time.
I think that it was meant to return the monster to the HAND not on top of the deck.
If it returned the monster to hand, it would probably be balanced.

Hope it will be fixed, the game is great and looking forward to PvP :P

:o, don't forget you could also use Reverse Time on your own monsters to save them.

what about adding cards with discard abilities?
(it must be dark element i think)
the variants are:
opponent discards a card(cards) from his hand
opponent discards a card(cards) at random from his hand
you look at your opponent's hand and choose a card/cards which he discards

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Originally Posted by Kabelis

You don't get an extra card because your strongest monster was killed by Reverse Time.
I think that it was meant to return the monster to the HAND not on top of the deck.
If it returned the monster to hand, it would probably be balanced.

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I doubt it can return the monster to hand, due to the limitations of having to have no more than 8 cards in your hand. I was thinking it putting the monster on the bottom of the target's deck would be the best fix for Reverse Time.

Perhaps randomly inserted into opponent's deck???


--rob77dp

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Originally Posted by rob77dp

Perhaps randomly inserted into opponent's deck??

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That could work too, it's just that time isn't supposed to be the random element and that gets some unpredictable effects imo.

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Originally Posted by bot!

what about adding cards with discard abilities?
(it must be dark element i think)
the variants are:
opponent discards a card(cards) from his hand
opponent discards a card(cards) at random from his hand
you look at your opponent's hand and choose a card/cards which he discards

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I sure hope these never go in. Pillar/quantum destruction is bad enough, forced discards would really frustrate me (And many other people. I can't think of anyone who enjoys playing against decks that use them in mtg). And if it did have to go in, I'd look at Death if it was one of the dark elements, because Black already has devourers and doesn't need a second form of denial. Alternatively (Again, if it must go in), Entropy could work for a random discard ability.

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Originally Posted by Kabelis

A pretty simple yet fun game you got here :]

Anyway, just wanted to point out that "reverse time" is overpowered.
I mean, it's THE best way to get rid of monsters.

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I don't think Reverse Time is overpowered. I have never used a Time deck myself, and I have been able to consistently defeat a Time deck with Reverse Time and Eternity with an Aether, Gravity or Aether/Gravity deck.

You just need specific strategies to deal with a Time deck.

For example: when I use an Aether deck against a Time opponent, I expect him to have Reverse Time and Eternity. So I withhold my powerful cards and save up my quanta until I summon a lot of powerful creatures in one turn. Then I summon two Phase Dragons, and I duplicate the dragons with three or four Parallel Dimensions. All done in a single turn. So my opponent won't be able to conjure up enough Reverse Time to discharge my four, five or six Phase Dragons at once; and he will be dead in two turns. Another strategy is to use Immortal that can't be targeted by Reverse Time.

For some other opponents and in some other situations, withholding cards is suicidal. You just need different strategies to deal with different elements.

'm getting tired of playing the tutorial trying to get coins to play the real match. Wish I could throw out my cards and buy new ones. 30min just to get to the Bizarre. stinks.

when u use steal on a bone wall
you get only one wall,not 7...
is it a bug or everything is ok?

Have more new cards been added? Just played against a deck with "mark of fire".

Never seen that card before, and it's not in the bazaar.

Also, I've been trying a dissipation deck. I don't see it as overpowered as some seem to be saying. If it works the way it's designed, your opponent gets to use his entire deck and if he can't beat you with that, it's just a weak deck that can prob be beat by most anything.

Edit:

Also found a bug. I stole the weapon that has momentum (can't remember name but turns into a 7/70! when flying). Next turn I cast flying weapon and owls eye and my owls eye was als able to bypass my opponent's shield.

A suggestion- the manage deck could use a scrollbar so I can see all my cards. I know about clicking on the individual elements which is why it's a suggestion not a bug!

Marauder:

The Mark of Fire and Mark of Death (heard a rumor it was floating around too?) are just "bug mistakes" from earlier in the releases of Elements. If I am remembering zanzarino's forum explanation correctly, it was a bug in the slots and only a VERY few qty of them got loose. He hasn't 'fixed' the Mark cards b/c they act just like pillars but stack separate from them - so few of them exist this is only a minor advantage to anyone and mostly just against Earthqauke at that. Also, he mentioned leaving it alone unless in the future it caused problems.

Hope that helps clear some of it up for you! :D


--rob77dp

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Originally Posted by rob77dp

Marauder:

The Mark of Fire and Mark of Death (heard a rumor it was floating around too?) are just "bug mistakes" from earlier in the releases of Elements. If I am remembering zanzarino's forum explanation correctly, it was a bug in the slots and only a VERY few qty of them got loose. He hasn't 'fixed' the Mark cards b/c they act just like pillars but stack separate from them - so few of them exist this is only a minor advantage to anyone and mostly just against Earthqauke at that. Also, he mentioned leaving it alone unless in the future it caused problems.

Hope that helps clear some of it up for you! :D


--rob77dp

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Thanks! Too bad I didn't win one :(

Earthquake proof pillars sound like a good idea- since they aren't "pillars" I would assume they are limited to only 6 in a deck.

Also, instead of making the slot machine give pillars, why not just make it give random cards, not limited to just what your opponent has?

Any one know how to break the cycle of win 2 coins only to lose them on level on can't get new cards must have 32 Or what ever?:scared::confused:

too bad it looks like a fun game if you win some once in a wile.

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Originally Posted by rock0head132

Any one know how to break the cycle of win 2 coins only to lose them on level on can't get new cards must have 32 Or what ever?:scared::confused:

too bad it looks like a fun game if you win some once in a wile.

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Starting out, you have to specialize your deck. Try getting it down to two colors so its more reliable by removing some of the other colors. Stil have to keep 30 cards so as you build up some coins buy more cards of the two colors you chose and eliminate others.

It's annoying at start, I know. Should be easier. But it gets better!

well, a good way to make it so eternity isnt overpowered, would probably be to make it run on charges, so it could come into play with one charge, and once thats done, it takes one turn and cost 0 quantams to recharge it, then cost 3 time quantams to reverse time again, so basically it can effectively only reverse time every other turn.

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Originally Posted by marauder68

Starting out, you have to specialize your deck. Try getting it down to two colors so its more reliable by removing some of the other colors. Stil have to keep 30 cards so as you build up some coins buy more cards of the two colors you chose and eliminate others.

It's annoying at start, I know. Should be easier. But it gets better!

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thanks :domo::domo:

About some of the questions I read on the forum...

Bone Wall:
Yes steal and deflagration work on only 1 shield, it is intended, it is one of the bone wall strength points and it makes steal and deflagration less "mandatory" in a deck build.
Using a new bone wall cards to ADD 7 charges is feasible but (maybe) it would make bone wall too powerful (it seems to me like it is a very different and balanced defensive strategy as it is right now)

Manage deck with scroll bar:
I didn't do it, and I'll never do it because Flash simply ignores the video card in your pc, that means no graphic acceleration whatsoever and the CPU does all the work. Putting a scroll bar there that moves around 100 pictures would make the game so slow that you would have time to send ma an email complaining about how slow the manage deck is... while waiting for the cards to move on the screen.
And I don't want a few thousand emails in my inbox.

I am not going to do any change to elements for a few weeks because I am in the middle of preparing a major patch for elements that will add the real time pvp system. I'll let you guys know when a beta pvp version is ready so we can try it and see if the server can stand it.

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Originally Posted by marauder68

Also found a bug. I stole the weapon that has momentum (can't remember name but turns into a 7/70! when flying). Next turn I cast flying weapon and owls eye and my owls eye was als able to bypass my opponent's shield.

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this card is called "Titan"
and it is not a bug,it gives momentum to all your damage sorces

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I doubt it can return the monster to hand, due to the limitations of having to have no more than 8 cards in your hand. I was thinking it putting the monster on the bottom of the target's deck would be the best fix for Reverse Time.

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It's basically the same..

Main point here is CARD ADVANTAGE.
Top, Bottom or middle of the deck, it doesn't matter, you STILL lose a monster and the amount of cards in your hand remains the same.
The fact that the card goes back into your deck for you to 'reuse it' DOES NOT benefit you in any way.

The amount of cards in your hand is still the same, and only cards in your hand matter (and count as an actual advantage).

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I don't think Reverse Time is overpowered. I have never used a Time deck myself, and I have been able to consistently defeat a Time deck with Reverse Time and Eternity with an Aether, Gravity or Aether/Gravity deck.

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My main point is that the destruction of the monsters in ALL the other elements is a lot weaker.

I mean, look at all the dragon cards for example.All of them are balanced in a sense, that for about 10 quantums you get about 15 stats.
Some dragons have more stats in DEF, others in ATK.
This is consistent throughout all the elements.

But when we come down to monster destruction, it's completely different.
Compared to "Reverse Time" cards like lightning, fire blast, freeze are useless.

If the game funcioned in a way that you could only use ONE of the elements, this sort of incosistency would be ok, because we would only need to balance cards inside each element (so some elements would be better at summoning monsters, e.g., others at destroying monsters and so on).

But you can use any cards in any deck.
For example, if you run a lot of quantum pillars and you need to choose which monster destruction to run, you will ALWAYS choose RT.

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Originally Posted by Kabelis

It's basically the same..

Main point here is CARD ADVANTAGE.
Top, Bottom or middle of the deck, it doesn't matter, you STILL lose a monster and the amount of cards in your hand remains the same.
The fact that the card goes back into your deck for you to 'reuse it' DOES NOT benefit you in any way.

The amount of cards in your hand is still the same, and only cards in your hand matter (and count as an actual advantage).

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The difference is you don't get locked just summoning that monster. You can get the other creatures in your hand, other abilities (Steal, deflag, etc. -- deal with eternity), a shield, a weapon, etc.

So yes, top or bottom of your deck does matter. It matters a great deal still.

RT/Eternity may be severely underpriced for their effect, but I also don't like how the effect works.

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Originally Posted by Kabelis

My main point is that the destruction of the monsters in ALL the other elements is a lot weaker.

I mean, look at all the dragon cards for example.All of them are balanced in a sense, that for about 10 quantums you get about 15 stats.
Some dragons have more stats in DEF, others in ATK.
This is consistent throughout all the elements.

But when we come down to monster destruction, it's completely different.
Compared to "Reverse Time" cards like lightning, fire blast, freeze are useless.

If the game funcioned in a way that you could only use ONE of the elements, this sort of incosistency would be ok, because we would only need to balance cards inside each element (so some elements would be better at summoning monsters, e.g., others at destroying monsters and so on).

But you can use any cards in any deck.
For example, if you run a lot of quantum pillars and you need to choose which monster destruction to run, you will ALWAYS choose RT.

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When I build a rainbow deck, RT is not the card on which I spend my Time Q. I use it on Golden Hourglass (as do most all the multi-element decks I face). Freeze is superior b/c it is 1 Q to cast and if your deck cannot deal with a monster having three turns to handle it, you had no chance anyways. Lightning and Fire Bolt have the ability to damage directly to HP, so if the opp. is creature-less or is just about to die but not quite, you can hammer with Lightning or FB.

Perhaps your current deck build is just rather susceptible to RT and therefore it is the one that bothers you the most? (I cannot really say since I do not know your deck...)


--rob77dp

There should be a bazaar where you can trade something like 4 rares for one of your choice!

Another idea to help mutation: Make it so if you mutate an entropy creature, it always turns into a mutant. If you target anything else, it has a chance to be destroyed or will turn into an abomination.

This leaves it effective offensively (Unless your opponent is entropy, in which case ... well, you can give them mutants. Risky, that.) but also gives a more controlled random while still preserving its ability to be used on your own non-entropy creatures like photons or sparks.

Does Aether have any rare card? I haven't seen any. All other elements have one or two rare cards, except Aether.

If you feel certain cards are overpowered, why don't you just use those cards in your deck? Take the advantage of those cards for yourself.

There are a few cards that no one ever uses. Mutation is one of them. I have never used it, and I have never encountered any level 3 or 4 opponent who uses it.

Then there are some cards that everyone uses (or should use.) Earthquake is one of them. Empathic Bond is another one. Owl's Eye is yet another if you can get it. A lot of level 4 players are using Earthquake, Empathic Bond and/or Owl's Eye.

I notice that more and more level 4 players, a disproportionate number of them, are using Earth or Earth-hybrid decks. I keep running into Earth or Earth-hybrid decks at level 4. I myself are buying and building Earth cards to switch to an Earth deck.

Aether rare = Lobotomizer.

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Originally Posted by ktchong

Does Aether have any rare card? I haven't seen any. All other elements have one or two rare cards, except Aether.

If you feel certain cards are overpowered, why don't you just use those cards in your deck? Take the advantage of those cards for yourself.

There are a few cards that no one ever uses. Mutation is one of them. I have never used it, and I have never encountered any level 3 or 4 opponent who uses it.

Then there are some cards that everyone uses (or should use.) Earthquake is one of them. Empathic Bond is another one. Owl's Eye is yet another if you can get it. A lot of level 4 players are using Earthquake, Empathic Bond and/or Owl's Eye.

I notice that more and more level 4 players, a disproportionate number of them, are using Earth or Earth-hybrid decks. I keep running into Earth or Earth-hybrid decks at level 4. I myself are buying and building Earth cards to switch to an Earth deck.

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Because a game is supposed to be balanced if it wants to be competitive.
Obviously so far you can only play against AI, so it doesn't matter so much.

But if PvP will be implemented, balancing the game is one of the most important things.

If 1 card is ALWAYS prefered before another ones, why are those cards in the game at all?

It is becoming increasingly frustrating that I can't save multiple decks.

I have a huge collection of different cards. It takes forever to load the deck management or bazaar screen. (i.e., I have at least one of every available non-rare card. Loading the deck management or bazaar is excruciatingly long.)

I read that a dynamic PvP is being worked on. Instead of replacing the current simulated level-4 PvP with the dynamic one, I suggest let's add another level. Level 5. So the simulated PvP should stay as level 4, and the dynamic PvP should become level 5 with increased rewards.

Level 4 should have 4x chances to win a card, (instead of the 3x now, which is disappointingly the same with level 3.) Level 5 should have 5x chances to win a card, and up to 40 or 50 electrum coins.

Here's a couple card suggestions:

Nymph. Nymphs live in oceans, rivers and lakes (i.e., water.) A nymph has low HPs and weak attack, but she can charm and seduce an opponent's creature, i.e., "steal" a summoned creature from the other side.

A nymph can only charm one creature at a time. If the nymph is destroyed, her spell is broken and the creature becomes freed.

Alternatively, a nymph can charm multiple creatures -- at one casting per turn -- depending on the overall metagame balance. Either way, if the nymph dies, the charm is broken. In this case, programming could be tricky with multiple nymphs controlling multiple different creatures at a time.

Another similar idea is Ghost/Spirit/Phantom (for either Death/Darkness/Aether,) which has the "Possess" ability. However, a summoned ghost/spirit/phantom is destroyed whenever it possesses and takes over a creature, (i.e., the ghost/spirit/phantom simply turns into the creature being possessed, and the original creature is destroyed.) This should be much easier to program.

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Originally Posted by Kabelis

Compared to "Reverse Time" cards like lightning, fire blast, freeze are useless.

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I personally find lightning and fire blast to be more dangerous than Reverse Time, and Freeze more annoying. Reverse Time should not be a problem if you develop some strategy to counter it.

Reverse Time is really the only "nice" trick the Time element has. What else does Time have? If you take away Reverse Time, then Time will have nothing left. Time by itself is a fairly weak element that can't stand well on its own.

If Reverse Time was overpowered, everyone would already be using and overusing it. If it was overpowered, I would already be using it. I haven't even seen too many people overusing Reverse Time. I haven't had any problem overcoming multiple Reverse Time attacks with different decks unless I got a very bad hand.

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Originally Posted by ktchong

If Reverse Time was overpowered, everyone would already be using and overusing it. If it was overpowered, I would already be using it. I haven't even seen too many people overusing Reverse Time. I haven't had any problem overcoming multiple Reverse Time attacks with different decks unless I got a very bad hand.

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Not necessarily. The fact that it's not being used a lot right now just means there are other cards that are even more overpowered than it :P

More card ideas:

Lazarus Pit (Life): Permanent. All of the player's creatures regenerate 0/+1 per turn. The creature HPs cannot go over its current maximum unless they have been raised by Blessing, Armor or another spell.

Seelie Court (Air): Permanent. Can summon a faery/fae/fey or (the proper literary name) Sidhe per turn.

Unseelie Court (Darkness): The evil counterpart of the Seelie Court. Can summon a bad faery per turn. (The bad faery has a name, but I can't recall it now.)

zanzarino is actually working on a card for entropy called Lilith that takes control of opposing creatures

Idea for Earthquake: Make it destroy 1/3 of the target stack's pillars, rounded up. So 1-3 pillars you'd lose 1, 4-6 you'd lose 2, 7-9 you'd lose 3, etc. That would let it punish decks with tons of pillars but be much weaker against multi-color decks, which I think is what was described as its goal when it was introduced.

Edit: It was pointed out to me that with that change its price could also be lowered. Probably to 2 initially, and see how it works there.

Edit2: While I'm at card suggestions, what about making Empathic Bond not stack, but then provide 3 healing per green creature (1 for the rest) to make it work better with its own color and not lose too much effectiveness when used with green. Its cost might be able to be lowered then as well.

I just started playing a few days ago. I went through 3-4 deck types, continually getting pissed off at the same old Devourer/Black Dragon combo that kept pissing me off. Eventually I created a Fire deck that was winning around 80% of the time, but it was boring to play. I just gave up, used the Devourer/Black Dragon deck myself, and added Drain Life plus a bunch of Obsidian Pillars to it. With that deck, I haven't lost yet, and I saw that isocarmine (a Devourer/Black Dragon player) made the same change to his deck the next day, so it must have done well against the other decks of the same type.

Devourer is ridiculously overpowered, and I certainly don't have any incentive to switch to another element until it's changed. It's effectively free to play, and it quanta-locks your opponent from the very start of the game if he gets a medium-poor opening draw.

Anyways, this is a really great game, but it appears to punish people for playing mono-color decks, which I find restrictive and senseless.

BUGS:

I haven't found any bugs, but there are several keyword discrepancies that need to be changed.

BURROW: says "can't be targeted" but that's incomplete. A Burrowed card can't take damage for any reason. There is effectively no difference between "burrowed" and "immortal", so it's pointless to have two keywords for the same ability.
-Solution: Immortal should mean "cannot take damage" and Burrowed should mean "cannot be targeted". Burrowed cards should still take damage from non-targeting sources (like Flame Shield).

FIRE BOLT/ICE BOLT/DRAIN LIFE: All say that they deal x damage for each 10 quanta in your possesion, but they actually deal X damage, PLUS x damage for each 10 quanta in your possesion.

QUANTA/QUANTUM and DAMAGE/DAMAGES: these are inconsistently used to denote the plural. They should be uniformly referred to as "Quanta" and "Damage".

Sorry if this sounds nitpickey, but I'm a technical writer and keyword accuracy is a pet peeve of mine. :)

Bug:

Sometimes, when I summoned a Phase Dragon and then cast Parallel Dimension on the Dragon, both dragons (original + duplicate) disappeared at the end of the turn. They just vanished as if they were Spark.

The last time this happen, I was using an Aether deck against Congeal with an Earth-Time hybrid deck. He had summoned one borrowed Graboid. I summoned a Phase Dragon and used a Parallel Dimension to make a duplicate. Both dragons disappeared immediately at the end of my turn. That was not the first time it happened.

Prior to that, Congeal used Earthquake to destroy my Aether Pillars. So that could be related. (As Earthquake was new, so it could have some coding error that needs to be fixed; I noticed Earthquake and the vanishing dragons had the same sound and effect.)

Another weird bug:

Sometimes Lightning showed up in my shield slot. The shield slot showed the Lightning picture and the word "Lightning" in it. This may have happened when I used Dimensional Shield and Lightning in the same turn, but I'm not sure. Later, I could still use a Dimensional Shield to replace the Lightning in the shield slot. This had happened twice before, but I couldn't duplicate the problem.

I notice that Deflagation costs 2 quanta to destroy one permanent/pillar. Earthquake costs 3 quanta to destroy three pillars.

Please work on some way to let us store multiple decks.

It's already excruciatingly slow to load the deck or bazaar screen (when a player has lots of different cards.)

In addition, it's extremely inconvenient to switch between different decks. We have to discard a current deck to create an alternate deck for experimentation, and we have to do it all over again to go back to a favorite deck. It's annoying.

Basically, we are being discouraged to experiment with different decks.

P.S. The deck and bazaar should not load my entire card collection every time.

Correct. Deflag hits weapons and shields too, a welcome use many times. More flexible therefore more cost per it's ability.


--rob77dp